Blog post by Camille Roux, Policy Manager at Mental Health Europe
Every year, European Mental Health Week comes with a familiar message: it’s time to talk about mental health. And to be fair, that part is kind of working. Across Europe, mental health is no longer invisible. It is in political speeches, popping up in EU documents, and even becoming a ‘grande cause nationale’ in my home country, France, for the second year in a row.
But here are two truths. First, people cannot thrive on mental health awareness alone. Second, awareness is not the same as understanding. Right now, Europe is still falling short on both. At the EU level, there cannot be conversations around mental health without talking about the ‘Comprehensive Approach to Mental Health’. Adopted in 2023, this document was a turning point. It made something explicit: mental health matters as much as physical health. It also recognised that mental health goes beyond healthcare, and it triggered other institutions to pay better attention to it. But if this was a good starting point for a true prioritisation at the EU level, we cannot rest on our laurels.
A growing disconnect
Yet, as professionals working on EU mental health policy, we can see a growing disconnect between the increased talk and the level of political action. The same one that all of you can see in underfunded services, in burnt-out staff, in the people left waiting, months, sometimes years, for accessing the support they need. The same disconnect some of you might notice in people still being institutionalised, deprived of their rights, or simply in the lack of community-based support.
There are signs that this might be changing and that a second wave of actions could be coming. The European Parliament is leading the charge. For the first time, there is a dedicated Intergroup on mental health, which is looking beyond the Comprehensive Approach and pushing for renewed action. In parallel, the public health committee in the European Parliament is planning an Own Initiative Report on Mental Health, 3 years after the first one was released. There is a sense that momentum is building again.
However, there is a need for caution on how this upcoming work will be framed. How we understand mental health shapes the policies we design and the impact they can have.
At Mental Health Europe, we have been advocating for more than 40 years for the psychosocial model of mental health and the ‘mental health in all policies’ approach.
And, for a moment, it seemed that the EU had embraced this broad understanding of mental health. But recent discussions in the Parliament about merging brain health and mental health initiatives were a wake-up call. It showed how easily the broader meaning of mental health can be lost. The point here is not diminishing the importance of brain health; brain health does matter and requires political attention. But a merger limits mental health to one of its many aspects at the detriment of all the other sides, which could lead to real-life consequences.
For the psychosocial disabilities community for instance, this shift is like a backward move toward the medical model, locating the ‘problem’ – and the policy, research and funding solutions associated – within brain synapses rather than in the environment. By pushing aside the psychosocial model, there is risk of pushing aside the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilitiesat a time we need policies that respects legal capacity, end coercion, and invest in the community-based supports that foster independent living.
Psychosocial approach needed
In France, a few weeks ago, a 66-year-old woman named Catherine Josselin died after having been pinned to the ground and held by force, as she was resisting her forced institutionalisation.[1] It is a horrifying reminder that the psychosocial approach must form the basis for policies and actions. It also reminds us about how high the stakes are for this policy debate.
So, yes, mental health policy is complex, and it is tempting to reduce its scope to make it easier to work on, but this complexity is essential. It is also what makes it a challenging but fascinating topic to work on!
This is why the upcoming Parliament report matters. It is not just another document; it is a chance to be clear about what mental health is and what it requires politically. This report should be another step to a real European Mental Health Strategy with time-bound actions, monitoring systems and proper funding to bring forth the mental health reforms needed across Europe. It should lead the way to a clear political commitment to change how systems work, not just how we talk about them.
We already know that our mental health matters.
In this European Mental Health Week, we stand together to demand that European leaders move beyond rhetoric and start investing in our right to mental health.